


mostly void

by darkavenue, liathcat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 06:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkavenue/pseuds/darkavenue, https://archiveofourown.org/users/liathcat/pseuds/liathcat
Summary: Being lost in a quantum abyss where the unstable forces of space and time can pull you apart at any moment sounds terrifying in theory. In practice, it’s kinda nice.A story from the two year mother/son camping trip.





	mostly void

Being lost in a quantum abyss where the unstable forces of space and time can pull you apart at any moment sounds terrifying in theory. In practice, it’s kinda nice.

It’s early morning fishing and late night campfires. Hiking and climbing against a backdrop of distorted dark stars. Krolia teaches him how to hunt, something Keith’s dad had always said they would do when he was older. She wakes him up early each day with a project to get to work on. Currently, it’s building a makeshift fireplace at the center of their little home. He likes always having something to keep him busy. It keeps them close and communicating without leaving too many awkward silences where they should be talking about things like their feelings, or whatever.

They trust that the creatures carrying them on their backs know their way around the abyss safely. The larger of the pair, the one they’ve built their shelter on, looks old as hell. Like it’s been doing this for centuries. It must be if it’s got an entire ecosystem thriving on its shell, right? Their home, by the way, is a partly constructed, but mostly natural, alcove within a set of rolling hills. It doesn’t look like much, but Keith is proud of it. He thinks he might be sad to leave it when the time comes.

Krolia keeps meticulous track of the hours passing. Every three hours, three rapid beeps sound from inside her helmet. On cue, she always turns to him with the same question. “What are you doing, Keith?”

“I’m tying up this kindling,” he declares, even though she can clearly see what he’s doing. She has trained him to always ask the same thing in return. “What are you doing, Krolia?”

He looks up the bundle of tinder in his hands. She’s arranging the firewood.

“I’m arranging the firewood.”

 _Beep, beep, beep._ Keith’s chopping plants over a plank of wood and Krolia’s cooking fish over the fire.

“What are you doing, Keith?”

They do this _every_ three hours. He rolls his eyes.

“I’m playing video games.”

“Are you winning, son?” she snaps back, not missing a beat.

Her tone is just dry enough to make him smile.

“I need you to take this seriously.”  
  
“This is annoying.”

“It’s important to maintain discipline and mental acuity in these situations.”

Keith gives her a flat look. “Camping’s not rocket science.”

“What are you doing, Keith?” she repeats firmly. “You need to check in. It’s mandatory procedure for space madness.”

“Space madness?”

“Something that happens when you’re lost and disoriented out in the void. Your mind deteriorates. You lose intellectual functions—Thinking, remembering, reasoning. Your mood and personality change beyond your control.”

 _Oh._ Oh, actually, he remembers the Blade attempting to teach him that procedure. Keith didn’t see it being a problem anytime soon, considering how his missions were always right in the thick of things.

“I—I’m slicing this root thing. What are you doing, Krolia?”

“Cooking the fish. I think they’re ready.”

He calls her Krolia because that’s the script she decided for their check ins. He’d rather not call her that, but at this point it would be weird to change it up. They never really had a point between them where it wouldn’t be weird, Keith thinks.

A burst of gold light outshines the orange flicker of the fire on their faces and his arms come up to shield his face from the oncoming collapse of time. Light sweeps over and swallows them, whiting out Keith’s vision. For a few seconds, he can see his arms in front of him but only a white void all around.

Then Krolia is there, standing alone against the blank backdrop. Keith’s been through enough time collapses at this point to know it isn’t current-time Krolia. The setting around her steadily bleeds into focus and Keith feels a pang of nostalgia. It’s his parents’ room.

His father sits on the corner of the bed with a baby in his arms. “If it’s based on Earth’s calendar, how do you know it’ll stay accurate when you’re so far away?”

Krolia sits on the opposite end, tinkering with something strapped to her wrist. “Took some deep math. But it’ll work out the conversion to keep set no matter where I travel.”

The memory cuts to a new setting. A galra ship. Krolia and Kolivan are both dressed in the empire’s armor.

“Congratulations on being reinstated into Zarkon’s force,” he says.

“Vrepit sa. I appreciate your work on my background checks.”

“This is a long term assignment. It’s going to be an extensive process to rise up high enough in galra ranks to gain the clearance you need at your new station. You will be out of contact with the Blade for very long periods of time.”

Krolia nods. She opens her mouth, but an alarm—not the three beeps Keith is familiar with, this one’s a single long _ping_ —cuts her off. Her eyes fall to the device around her wrist and she seems to forget Kolivan is there for a moment.

“What is it, Krolia?”

“Nothing. It’s a personal reminder of the mission. I assure you that I am ready for this.”

Kolivan doesn’t even question it. “It’s wise to have an anchor when you are under deep cover for this long.”

The scene jumps to other linked memories in rapid succession. He sees different places that alarm has gone off over time, wherever she is. Sometimes she’s with the blade. Others she’s with the empire. Sometimes she’s by herself. Keith feels like he watches years pass before his eyes. Most of the time, she hardly reacts to the sound. She pushes a reset button on it and carries on.

The roulette of visions stops inside another galra ship. Krolia follows a general down the hall to a door with a panel lock.

“Open it,” he instructs, “You’ve made the empire proud.”

She places her palm on the glowing scanner. When she does, the timer on her wrist pings. Just once. The door swooshes open, revealing a spacious bedroom cabin, but no one seems to care for it. Krolia and the general are both looking at the device around her wrist.

“We’ve heard that around the ship now and then. What is it for?”

The question doesn’t bother her. “I used it to keep track of time when I was stranded.”

“That was ages ago. Why do you still use it? Oh! Is it a testimony to your failure, a reminder to learn from your errors? Vrepit sa, that’s good stuff. I think I’ll use that in the future for myself.”

Krolia gives him a hard stare in return.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” he offers.

Keith follows her into her new cabin a split second before she shuts the door on the general. She doesn’t look around her new living quarters at all. Yellow eyes stare at the strap around her wrist and he watches her face crumple. She leans back against the door and takes ragged breaths, as if on the urge of sobbing. But he doesn’t see tears come. The sight of her falling apart is drowned out in a flash of light.

The time collapse subsides. He’s in front of a fire with Krolia and the wolf. He looks at Krolia and wonders what she saw from his past. They have a weird unspoken agreement not to bring any of these moments up. It’s sort of an invasion of privacy on both sides. For now, he’s relieved that flashback just now didn’t make him watch his mom cry.

He helps her prepare the meal and doesn’t complain about her alarm or her check ins anymore.

 

* * *

 

Grey eyes blink open at the sound of a single high-pitched _ping._ The night air is cool around him and a soft warmth radiates against the small of Keith’s back. His head shifts to glance over his shoulder. The dog they found here is curled up against him.

Hearing something other than the three beeps that he’s so accustomed to is startling enough that it gets Keith to sit up despite how comfortable he feels. Slowly, so as not to disturb the dog, but Keith receives a grumpy huff from it anyway.

It takes him a minute to remember why the _ping_ felt familiar. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since that particular time flash, but it wasn’t recent. Their fireplace has long been finished. It’s even got a mantle with some knick-knacks from around here on display. Krolia, however, lies still a few feet away. Strange. He knows she’s a light sleeper. It should have woken her if it came from her.

He crawls closer to her, reaching out to wake her. But her eyes are already open when he gets close enough to see her face in the moonlight from the mouth of the alcove. His arm pauses mid-air. She’s looking at him.

Things are still tentative between them. Neither is talkative and they only touch out of necessity. Lending helping hands or shielding each other from the unexpected blasts, sure. But certainly no reaching out in the middle of the night. It would have been nice to gently shake her awake, he thinks, but that opportunity passed. Or maybe was never there.

Stiff and awkward, Keith drops his hand to his side. “I thought I heard something.”

Krolia sits up. She takes off her glove for a moment and he sees that device with her personal alarm strapped around her wrist. She resets it with a delicate push of a button and pulls her glove back on. She has a distant, inscrutable look on her face all the while.

“What are you doing, Krolia?” he asks, because he doesn’t know how to approach anything without a script.

“Keith,” she says.

He waits for something to follow that, but only a long silence stretches afterward. “Yes?”

She reaches out to him. Unprompted, she cups his cheek. Keith feels a tiny kick somewhere high up in his chest and his starved skin feels like it’s buzzing. His mom smiles at him, a strange smile, like she’s delighted but hasn’t felt delight enough times to remember how to process it.

“Happy birthday.”


End file.
